


The Missing Piece

by TrulyMightyPotato



Series: Protector Duties [5]
Category: Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Blood, Dark Magic, Demons, Destruction of magic, Gen, Hidden heirs, Magic Swords, Murder, Regicide, Undead, loss of self, lots of death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-17
Updated: 2018-06-17
Packaged: 2019-05-24 08:40:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14951331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TrulyMightyPotato/pseuds/TrulyMightyPotato
Summary: Not even Gar remembers everything that happened the fateful night he became a demon. This is the missing piece of that story.





	The Missing Piece

**Author's Note:**

> Would you look at that; today marks two years on this site. It's a weird thing to think about, especially since I've been publishing Realms stories for all of it. I'm not ready to start publishing Bonds of Loyalty just yet, but just so you guys know I'm not abandoning you, have this.

The Seventh District, in the north, was the first to fall that night. The prince showed up, blood soaked through his clothes and smeared across his armor, begging for help, a body with his sigil emblazoned on the uniform cradled in his arms. He said something about a demon’s teleportation spell, about getting catapulted across the kingdom, about the war—of course he was brought inside, and the Lady brought to see him.

She’d never thought to see the beloved prince screaming on the floor, healers desperately trying to remove his armor to see the injuries he must have had, crying desperately, brokenly, for Protector Snow, laying undeniably still only a few feet away. She’d heard rumors of what it was like to lose a Protector, of course, but seeing the agony of it herself was more than she could bare.

A healer finally reached over and set a hand on his forehead, sending magic into the prince, stilling him. Tears still streaked down his cheeks, and his breathing was gasps, his fingers constantly straining to reach for his sword. His eyes were simultaneously too dull and too bright, dead and nearly fevered.

It was then the healers managed to remove his armor, and revealed the blood soaking his underclothes, covering his chest and his back.

It was then the prince lunged, grabbing Tapestry, and cutting down the healers trying to pin him. He didn’t seem fully aware of what was happening, but still cried out in unmistakable horror.

The Lady turned, her Protector jumping into action, confusion flickering across both their faces, before Tapestry sunk into the Lady’s side and she went limp. Her Protector screamed, once, as they collapsed, but then was silent.

The Heirs came running, and each were cut down.

The magic groaned with the loss, sending the prince to a knee, reeling with the shock of the deaths. For a moment, his eyes seemed to flicker, and they filled with tears. And then, sobs wracking the young man’s body, the prince stood. With a flick of his fingers, his armor returned to its rightful place on him, and he scooped up Snow’s body.

And, then, he teleported to the Sixth District to repeat it.

It never got any easier. The prince knew the names behind each of the nobles he cut down, knew their stories, knew their magic, and each death sent the magic spinning, tangling. Each death made it harder to fight back against the demon magic forcing his limbs to move, fogging the prince’s mind just a bit more.

The Sixth District fell. Then the Fifth. The Fourth, already scarred by the horrific battles that had taken place there, fell quickly—an infant was rushed out in the arms of a nursemaid, and it took all the will the prince had left to not jump at her and destroy the both of them.

The Third fell. 

The Second. The eldest Heir, left to protect Diul, did not die easy. In fact, he took one look at the prince—covered in the blood of dozens of nobles, eyes distinctly glowing red and blue, and turned and ran. His Protector fought bravely, but fell nonetheless, and the prince methodically slaughtered the younger Heirs. 

He found the eldest Heir in the top of a tower, leaning against the wall, trembling, face soaked with tears and hair and clothes soaked with sweat. 

The prince raised his sword-

“He’s a demon! The prince has become a demon!”

-and cut the Heir’s cry short.

The magic came crashing down on the prince’s shoulders, sending him to his hands and knees. And there he sobbed, watching the magic through unfocused vision. It was flailing, screaming, and he knew it was his fault. He’d fallen, become a threat, and it was his fault. His fault.

He turned his eyes to himself, watching in disgusted horror as a weave of red-purple lines finished weaving itself in with his normal royal blue, and sobbing more as it seemed to absorb that blue.

Power thrummed under his fingertips, thrummed through him, making him feel like a too-full river with power he could never hope to control, to contain. He’d felt the magic of an entire kingdom, but this was so much more. So much, too much.

A familiar presence brushed across him, and the prince’s sobs stopped. He looked up, eyes searching the darkness surrounding him, the silence suffocating him.

Snow wasn’t there.

The prince stilled, though, taking heaving breaths, as his eyes noticed something about the magic. Even through the thrashing, the panicking, the magic had been doing, if one looked closely-

The Heir had sent a communication spell. He’d sent it in every direction. It fell short, of course, in most places. Only two nobles remained in the Changing Lands now.

The prince fought the best he could to keep the demon magic from acting, but he was too new, too inexperienced, and was once again teleported—this time, to the castle he knew as home. In a hall. Armor and sword clean. Hair still plastered to his head with sweat, but that was all.

The royal guard was coming. The prince knew that. They were coming for him, acting on the information the Heir to the Second District had sent before his death.

A name already foreign to the prince tumbled from a mouth he should know, a voice he should recognize, and he looked up to see the woman he remembered as his wife run to him.

The demon magic roared in his head, screaming, twitching his fingers towards his sword, trying to get him to strike her down.

His gaze shifted to the toddler behind his wife—small and undeniably a princess, familiar uncontrollable curls tumbling from her head, shy brown eyes peeking at him-

And for the first time in several hours, the prince had a moment of calm. A moment of clarity.

Snow. Snow was out back. He was dead, that much was unmistakable, but he was  _ waiting. _ His body was dead, but his soul was very much alive, he was undead. Trapped in his body by the prince’s own doing, unable to move on to his medallion and unable to heal a dead body.

He scooped up the girl, his daughter— _ his daughter Snow said he had a child he had a daughter and he had to keep her safe _ —and pushed her into the arms of the maid there, ordering her out of the room, towards Snow. Towards safety.

His wife just stared at him, confusion clear, then turned to follow—only for the prince to reach forward and grab her hand.

In another life, perhaps he would have come to love her.

Tapestry cut through her.

The prince dropped her body, an odd detachment coming over him, and turned to face the guards.

When he was done, the hallway was filled with bodies and blood.

He could feel himself changing as he walked—stalked—towards the queen, but something about it didn’t alarm him. Even when he crumpled on the floor in agony, body shifting, sliding, making room for extra teeth and fur and a wing nearly large enough with to fly with, his attention was very much focused on something else.

The magic was whispering to him, barely audible, barely making it through the haze caused by the demon magic.

And so it was he didn’t fight the demon magic when Tapestry cut through the Queen.

The magic screamed once again, then fell still, but the prince knew what to do now.

When he arrived at the heart of the magic, where the Soulstealer was waiting, he could feel the magic trying to latch on to him in desperation, trying to bind itself to the oldest surviving royal.

And when the Soulstealer ordered him to destroy the knot in the magic, to let the elder demon prince absorb the magic, he understood fully what the whispers had meant.

So he plunged Tapestry into the weave of magic stretching across the Changing Lands, nearly screaming as agony tore through him, through his magic.

And then, the magic’s screams and his own screams trapped in his head, the prince cut the magic, tearing it, making it seven pieces.

Tapestry protested, of course. It was made to protect the magic, to protect the Changing Lands, and had been used to destroy that very thing. And he dropped the sword, somehow knowing he’d never be allowed to pick it up again.

And then he stood, ignoring the Soulstealer’s fury, and looked at the broken magic. And he looked at his own magic, spots of royal blue peeking through the overwhelming red-purple.

And he promised.

One day, he would fix the magic of the Changing Lands. He would undo what he did. He would see his duty as the prince fulfilled.

And then he took a breath, and as Snow raced north with the future of the kingdom in undead arms, gave in to his exhaustion.

He became the Demon Prince.


End file.
